Chicken Soup for the Soul: Country Music: The Inspirational Stories behind 101 of Your Favorite Country Songs

by Jack Canfield

Back when we were beautiful, beautiful, yes.”

  Believe

  Story by Craig Wiseman

  Song written by Craig Wiseman and Ronnie Dunn

  Recorded by Ronnie Dunn (Brooks & Dunn)

  After I won a Grammy for “Live Like You Were Dying,” back in my hometown of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, somebody from the local TV station wanted to come and interview my mom. They asked her questions like “What is it like being the mother to a Grammy-winning songwriter?” She went and got a couple of laundry baskets full of CDs with songs that I had written. She just dumped them on her dining room table in a pile, and the reporter said, “How does he do that? How does he write so many songs?” And my mom said, “Honestly, I don’t know. He’s always been interested in music, but I have no idea where all those songs come from.”

  Later that night, after the piece was on the news, my brother called me and said he got a call from an elderly woman. She said, “Is this the family of the lady who was on the television news tonight?” And my brother told her it was his mother who was on TV, and asked if she would like her phone number. The lady said, “If you could just relay a message for me, I would appreciate it.” Then she said, “Tell your mother that all those songs came from God.”

  My brother said, “I spent about thirty minutes on the phone with that lady and I was just crying my eyes out. This woman is just amazing. She has the most incredible faith.”

  I asked my brother to give me her number and he did. Her name was Elma Dennis. I called her one night and I think she thought she was talking to my brother at first. I said, “Ma’am, this is the songwriter up in Nashville that they were talking about on the news. I’m Craig. My brother enjoyed talking to you so much that I wanted to talk to you.”

  She said, “Gracious, child, what are you doing calling me all the way from Nashville? God is working in your life. I could see it in your mother’s eyes on TV. I can hear it in your brother’s voice and I can hear it in your voice. God is with you and God loves you and don’t you ever doubt it for a minute,” and just went on and on. I stood in my kitchen weeping, listening to this lady.

  Cut to Ronnie Dunn of the country supergroup, Brooks & Dunn. I had another song that Ronnie’s label wanted him to hear and I said, “I drive right past his house on my way home. I’ll just go drop it off in his mailbox.”

  About 5:00 or so, I pulled up to his gate and put it on his mailbox and buzzed on the buzzer and said, “This is Craig Wiseman. I just wanted you to know that I’m dropping off a song for Ronnie Dunn.” And his voice came on the speaker box and said, “Hey, come on back to the barn.” He has this in-town ranch with a big barn he calls the Star Barn. He refurbished it and has his studio there and it’s just gorgeous. Everybody knows that’s kind of his lair back there. I went to the barn and gave him the CD with the song. It was actually “Hillbilly Deluxe” and it wound up being a hit for him. Then we started talking and it turns out he has read every book that I’ve read and more. He collects Russian art. I was ashamed that I had put him in the hillbilly-singer “box.” He’s a very intelligent, well-read person.

  He asked what my wife did and I said she was a minister and has her Master’s Degree in Divinity from Vanderbilt. He said, “Really? You know, I almost went to seminary in Oklahoma.”

  I said, “Are you kidding me?” We started talking about faith and different questions we had. I told him about Elma. I told him, “Faith is like music. There is so much BS out there, but every now and then you come across the real deal. And that’s Elma. Her faith and conviction were so real and so contagious. She believes so strongly.”

  I told Ronnie that during my conversation with her, she said, “You know child, they tell me I’m dying of cancer, but that’s okay. I’m with the Lord and it’s in His hands and if He wants me to stick around, I will.” I told Ronnie that when you run across somebody like that and they’re not preaching to you and they’re not telling you what to do, they’re just telling you where they’re at. There’s something so powerful about that. It reminded me of another friend of mine who’s doing missions work now. He hardly ever even goes to church but his life has changed so drastically. And it’s never like he’s saying, “Look how cool I am now that I’ve changed.” It’s always, “Look how cool that is and that’s where I’m going.” It’s so inspiring.

  So Ronnie and I started trying to write a song. We were trying to run some up-tempo thing and it just wasn’t working. After we got to talking about faith that night and I told him about Elma, we started writing what would eventually become “Believe.”

  We didn’t write a word in a notebook. We didn’t have a recorder. And I came up with a line or two: “I raise my hand, I bow my head. I’m finding more and more truth in the words written in red.” We worked on this long, weird thing until midnight and we called it a day. Then, we both tried to forget about it.

  About six months later, after Brooks & Dunn came home from their summer tour, I went back to write with Ronnie. He said, “Hey, remember that thing we were playing around with last time you were here? Let’s work on that.”

  I started strumming and it all came back and the parts we still needed just flowed right out: “Old man Wrigley lived in that white house. . ..” That was a little autobiographical. There was an old guy on our street. But our relationship was more like a “Dennis the Menace-Mr. Wilson” kind of thing. It wasn’t quite as lofty as I cast it in the song. I used to go down to his house and I really liked him because he treated me well. There’s nothing like an old guy treating a kid cool.

  So Elma turned into Mr. Wrigley in the song. When Elma was talking about her friends she was going to see soon, I wrote, “He said ‘I’ll see my wife and son in just a little while’ / I asked him what he meant / He looked at me and smiled.” We started talking about all kinds of spiritual things and we ended up finishing it. The next morning, I went back to my office and sat down with my guitar recorder and put a slow rhythm track and just sang it. I put it on a CD and took it over to his house and dropped it off. Then I was like “Man, that song is done. Now can we please write a song about honky-tonks and trucks?”

  A few weeks later, Ronnie called me and said he cut it. It was amazing. Ronnie took that little recording I made and turned it into one of the coolest things that has ever happened to me in this business. It made the album, and then went on to be a single and won the CMA Song of the Year and ACM Song of the Year.

  My family got to know Elma after that. My mom loved talking to her. You know, a couple of church ladies. A few months later, Elma went back for a checkup and they couldn’t find any cancer. She said, “Well, you know those doctors, they think they know what they’re doing, but they don’t know everything.”

  That song is like suicide for a songwriter. The darn thing must be six minutes long and it’s mostly recitation, which country music hasn’t really done for about 30 years. It’s not the typical Brooks & Dunn honky-tonkin’ song, for sure. I mean, it had everything working against it from a technical standpoint. But it worked. And it obviously struck a chord with a lot of people who may not be holy-rollers but they just can’t believe that this life is all there is.

  Believe

  Old man Wrigley lived in that white house

  Down the street where I grew up

  Momma used to send me over with things

  We struck a friendship up

  I spent a few long summers out on his old porch swing

  Says he was in the war when in the navy

  Lost his wife, lost his baby

  Broke down and asked him one time

  How ya keep from going crazy?

  He said “I’ll see my wife and son in just a little while”

  I asked him what he meant

  He looked at me and smiled, said

  CHORUS:

  “I raise my hands, bow my head

  I’m finding more and more truth in the words written in red

  They tell me that there’s more to life than just what I can se
e

  Oh I believe”

  Few years later I was off at college

  Talkin’ to mom on the phone one night

  Getting all caught up on the gossip

  The ins and outs of the small town life

  She said “Oh by the way son, old man Wrigley’s died.”

  Later on that night, I laid there thinkin’ back

  Thought about a couple long-lost summers

  I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh

  If there was ever anybody deserved a ticket to the other side

  It’d be that sweet old man who looked me in the eye, and said

  CHORUS

  I can’t quote the book

  The chapter or the verse

  But you can’t tell me it all ends

  In a slow ride in a hearse

  You know I’m more and more convinced

  The longer that I live

  Yeah, this can’t be

  No, this can’t be, no this can’t be all there is

  CHORUS

  Bobbie Ann Mason

  Story by Mark D. Sanders

  Song written by Mark D. Sanders

  Recorded by Rick Trevino

  I always get a lot of ideas from book titles. That’s how I wrote the song, “Bobbie Ann Mason.” I loved the books In Country and Shiloh and Other Stories by Bobbie Ann Mason. After I heard the song, “Norma Jean Riley,” I think that name just stuck in my head. Later, I thought, “Bobbie Ann Mason” had a similar ring to it.

  I actually wrote the song about a girl who I sat behind in English class when I was a junior in high school. Her name was Sue Struck. But the only words that I could think of that rhymed with Struck I probably couldn’t get played on country radio. But there’s a line in the chorus that says, “How was I gonna get an education / sitting right in back of Bobbie Ann Mason” that worked pretty well.

  Bobbie Ann actually called me one day. It was down at the old Starstruck building on Music Row. The receptionist called me and said, “Mark, Bobbie Ann Mason is on the phone.” That shocked me. I didn’t know if she would be mad. It turned out that she was a little put off by the fact that I used her name in the song, but I think she got over that. Then she wrote a column about it later on the back page of The New Yorker. And then I was a little put off because she never credited me as the writer. In her article, she quoted about a third of the lyrics in the song but never credited the songwriter. She talked about Rick Trevino a lot, but I guess she thought it would mix people up a lot if she said that he didn’t write it, so she never mentioned my name. So we had an odd relationship there for a while.

  The funniest thing about this, though, is that there is a bookstore in Oxford, Mississippi called Square Books. It’s a really quaint little place. It’s one of the few places that John Grisham has done book signings. They have a “signed first edition” club that I was a member of for about ten years. Every time Bobbie Ann would write a new book, she would participate in this signed first edition club, where the author will actually sign it to you if you want your name in the book. So she signed a couple of books to me and, after that, she started writing little notes to me like, “Okay, Mark, here’s another one for you.”

  I still have those books with her curt little notes to me. But I don’t know if she ever put it together: that I was the one who also wrote the song with her name in it.

  Bobbie Ann Mason

  It wasn’t the books that I didn’t read

  It wasn’t the teach that tried to teach me

  It wasn’t that varsity baseball coach,

  Kept on tellin’ them locker room jokes, it was:

  CHORUS:

  Bobbie Ann Mason, back in high school.

  She was way too cute, she was way too cool.

  How was I gonna get an education,

  Sittin’ right in back of Bobbie Ann Mason.

  Well, Bobbie knew her history, Bobbie knew her French,

  Bobbie knew how to keep the boys in suspense.

  She’d tease with a touch, she’d tease with a kiss,

  I was three long years being teased by pretty Miss:

  CHORUS

  Yeah, Bobbie graduated first in her class.

  Me, I graduated closer to last.

  Bobbie went to college, she got a degree,

  I got a guitar so I could sing about me and. . .

  CHORUS

  The years have taught me, the basics of math.

  Divorce divides; time subtracts; takes away your hair,

  Takes away your jump shot,

  But it ain’t gonna take all the memories I got of. . .

  Bobbie Ann Mason, back in high school

  She was way too cute, she was way too cool.

  I got most of my education

  Sittin’ right in back of Bobbie Ann Mason.

  Sittin’ right in back of Bobbie Ann Mason.

  By the Time I Get to Phoenix

  Story by Jimmy Webb

  Song written by Jimmy Webb

  Recorded by Glen Campbell, Johnny Rivers, and others

  I had an old girlfriend and the relationship wasn’t going too well. So I just resolved to show her a thing or two and move back home to Oklahoma. That was a pretty stupid thing to do, and didn’t do much in the way of punishing her either, of course. But it created a very interesting song. I was a staff writer at a publishing company. It was my first real writing job.

  I brought it in for the Motown people to hear. It’s a three-verse form. It just has three strophic verses, so it’s a ballad in the traditional sense. It tells a story, and when the story is over the song is over. So the Motown guys listened to it and said, “Where is the chorus?”

  I said, “There isn’t going to be a chorus,” and we had a pretty lively discussion over that. They were pretty much into the chorus, the hook, drum breaks, and bridges, and all the ideas they had about how to make hits. And they were right for the most part. They started talking about pitching it to Paul Petersen then, who was an actor on The Donna Reed Show.

  The first session I went to where I heard it, though, was a Tony Martin session. It passed into another sphere of influence and I’m not really sure exactly how that happened. It ended up as a Johnny Rivers Music copyright, and it ended up on his album.

  Glen Campbell was driving down the road and heard Johnny’s version on the radio. This was probably just a few months after Johnny had cut it. For a while, there was a stigma for some producers. They wouldn’t listen to any song if it had ever been recorded by anyone. That’s just not a very intelligent way to go about doing A&R because there are going to be some great records that get recorded but aren’t hits. Some great songs have been just left behind. If you think the producers have gotten them all, you’re wrong. Every writer will tell you there are at least a couple that got left by the wayside somewhere.

  There are a million reasons why a song does or doesn’t become a hit. I’ve given the matter a lot of thought and I think it’s almost supernatural. A hit record is almost a small miracle. There are so many elements. Does the singer sound like he should be singing the song? Is it the right song for him? What about the arrangement? Is it overdone? Is it not big enough? What about the players? Was the drummer too heavy-handed that day? Did he have a hangover? What day of the week was it? What was the temperature in the room? Was it too humid and did it affect the instruments so that it came out sounding flat? Did it have the magic to it that translates to sounding good in a car? What makes a record sound good in a car? It’s not going to be a hit if it doesn’t sound good in a car. The new album of mine, Just Across the River, was mixed to be heard in a car.

  Does the song sound like it should come out of this guy’s mouth? I wrote something for Willie Nelson one time. I thought it was going to be a hit. I didn’t hear him say it, but I heard someone who knew him claim that Willie said, “I just can’t hear that coming out of my mouth.” So that’s another factor.

  “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” actually ends on a chord that
is out of the key signature. I wrote it in F and it ends on an A chord, a major third higher. That’s the way Glen recorded it. He arranged the record. A lot of people don’t know it, but Glen Campbell was a great arranger. Most of the songs that he recorded, he contributed to the arrangements, too. He had a flare for arranging and that had something to do with that record’s success, too.

  The city I chose, Phoenix, is right on Route 66 and it sounded right on the time-space continuum of the singer traveling on the highway, even though it’s a little distorted, going from one city to the next. Sometimes as a writer, you come to a decision like that and you just flip a coin. You make decisions based on what sounds real. You want something that sounds authentic. You could try “By the Time I Get to Flagstaff,” but does it work as well? Is that one of those tiny little factors that determines whether a song is a hit or not? You bet.

  By the Time I Get to Phoenix

  By the time I get to Phoenix she’ll be rising

  She’ll find the note I left hangin’ on her door

  She’ll laugh when she reads the part that says I’m leavin’

  ’Cause I’ve left that girl so many times before

  By the time I make Albuquerque she’ll be working

  She’ll prob’ly stop at lunch and give me a call

  But she’ll just hear that phone keep on ringin’

  Off the wall, that’s all

  By the time I make Oklahoma she’ll be sleepin’

  She’ll turn softly and call my name out loud

  And she’ll cry just to think I’d really leave her

  Though time and time I tried to tell her so

  She just didn’t know I would really go.

  Can’t Be Really Gone

  Story by Gary Burr

  Song written by Gary Burr

  Recorded by Tim McGraw

  I was reading a newspaper one morning back around 1995. I think it was a local story. It may have been in the Nashville Banner. I read this story about a woman who was making lunch for her daughter and they had just sat down to eat it together. Then a friend of her daughter’s came by play with her, so the mother let her go out to play. This girl and her mom lived close to the highway and apparently the little girl and her friend were playing too close to the highway, and she was killed by a car.